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Monday, 1 October 2018

“‘I could not wish for
that which I have not yet experienced,” he said.’ Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov

It was, and still is,
quite understandable that when June came back from death, and the ensuing
Paradise, she should have a dominating fervour to return to this Paradise she
had so lightly touched. After coming back from this death, and Paradise, she slowly
blinked a few times and shook her head.

‘It’s okay, miss,’ said a young and
pleasant female. ‘You’re in an ambulance. We’re going to Royal Prince Alfred
Hospital. You were hit by a car.’

June closed her eyes, and remembered the
accident.

The accident, unexpectedly, though, had
led to the entrance into Heaven for her, and this was the only thing she could
focus on, feeling blessed. She thus soon came to view each day as a possible path
back to this Paradise, Its actual presence being the justification for her
sentience. She could, of course, suicide, and attempt Heaven that way, but her
instincts told her she would just return forever to the moment of her suicide.

Then she began to consider living rough,
just leaving everything, all the modern clutter, to better find some semblance
of Heaven here on Earth, hidden somewhere in the wild, or to enter It once
more. The prospect seemed exciting. She could have a real adventure where she
would both be on Earth, and either close to Heaven in the urban wilderness, or
once more having found her way back There. She also jokingly considered taking
up some illicit drugs while she was on the streets, and so making her search for
Paradise even easier. And when she arrived There she’d be able to celebrate in
such sweet, fine style, hopefully with enough drugs to share. Indeed, maybe
actually something seriously to consider.

When she did decide to ‘go homeless’, three
weeks after dying, she also decided she must do so instantly. She also had to
literally burn all of her bridges behind her; she had to enter the jungle
virtually naked, the more ready to robe herself in the vestments of Heaven.

So she burned her house down. The one that
she had inherited from her mother. The one where she had lived very quietly and
very well, without needing to work for all of her twenty-one years, another
legacy of her mother’s.

She left her old life, to seek an eternal
life, when all of the curtains in the front living room were ablaze. She was
not there when a crowd began to form and she was not there when the fire
brigade eventually arrived. And none could ever trace her.

*

June didn’t know it at the
time but she had terrific luck in finding squats around the inner city suburbs
of Sydney. Counterpoint to that luck, however, was the fact that the squats
always had tenants already, which tenants would not let her move in. They,
without differing, all said that she ‘looked like a cop.’

In fact, her ill luck became so bad that
she soon had no choice but to sleep in parks. She tried a few, and had bought a
sleeping bag for the occasion. She was looking for a park that seemed to have
the quickest path back to Paradise. She eventually came to choose Royal Prince
Alfred Park, Redferne, to sleep in. The park had a massive fig tree at the
entrance, an obvious, massive hint for the searching June.

Sleeping in the park was initially the
great adventure that it promised to be to June. It was a month or so after the
start of a very hot spring, 2015, and she went to sleep each night easily, after
staring at the stars for a little while, wondering which of them held Paradise.
She was warm atop her sleeping bag every night, and seeing that her only
expense was food, she was saving most of her trust monies.

Sleeping in the park, however, also soon
became unbearable. It was the rain. She had been camping there a week or so,
contentedly, very contentedly, feeling Paradise’s sure pull, when suddenly the
heavens heavily rained upon her sleep. She was drenched, awaking in a panic,
feeling attacked and abandoned.

The shock also made her realise that there
was one squat that she could live in: the burned wreck of her home. She didn’t
know how badly her former home was burned but it seemed a surer thing than
remaining here to get thoroughly more drenched and maybe catch pneumonia.

Luckily she was within walking distance of
her former abode and soon enough returned. It was not too bad. For a squat. The
roof had partially caved in and the place was now basically just a charred box,
littered with ashes.

She moved under the safety tape fence and
entered her childhood home.

A lot of the things survived the fire, a
clear call that they expected her to return. There was one sofa that was
usable, all of the plates were fine, blackened, but washable, the large, glass
and metal dining table was similarly blackened but washable. There were also a
lot of other useable things. All a clear sign that her journey must begin here.

She was so comfortable in her home that
she was not surprised when she was gently shaken awake on the first morning
after her return. She awoke expecting an angel.

‘Hey,’ said a gruff, bearded, and unkempt
man with a gruff voice, ‘who are you?’

While she continued idly wandering though
laneways and streets in Redferne she was thinking of heroin, prompted by the
squatter who had evicted her. Maybe it was time to try some drugs to better
reach Nirvana? Indeed, they seemed like the only answer left that would fulfil
her desire. Going back to Royal Prince Alfred Park with a very nice friend in
her system, and taking the chance of being awoken again by the rain, seemed to
her like a sure way to attain Paradise. Indeed, the only way.

She didn’t know where to get any heroin
but she did know that one could get marijuana, maybe, from a pub. Pot may be
the only drug she could get, at least for now. She was willing to try as many
pubs as it took, also asking if she could get maybe some heroin whilst also
getting the pot. She had nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

She got her pot at the first pub she
tried, and with the first guy she asked. He had long blond hair and a fulsome,
waxed, and curled moustache, a dark leather jacket and dark jeans, altogether
of the bohemian set, nursing a schooner of dark ale. She had no idea how to
smoke it and, after handing over the requested twenty dollars, explained her
situation to the guy, the fact that she was trying pot for the first time. He
was obliging, telling her to get a hash pipe from a tobacconist and then to
chop up the pot finely into a bowl. He recommended she only have a third of a
pipe to begin with.

So she went back to the park, after buying
scissors, a small bowl, and a hash pipe, and followed his instructions. It was the
worst experience that she’d ever had. The pot came on soon after she drew it
in, and she felt nothing but anxiety. The pot made her feel horrible, fleeing
Paradise and its fundamental meaning instead of reaching It.

She felt so terrible that she had to be
taken to Rozella Psychiatric Hospital. She rang an ambulance, after throwing
the pot away, explaining what she had just done. The Hospital discharged her
after the second day, the hospital not realising the address she had given as
her residence was a husk.

She didn’t leave the hospital altogether
though for she saw potential in the many nooks and crannies of the hospital’s extensive,
natural grounds. She could live easily in one of those crannies, sheltered from
the inevitable rain.

She had spent six weeks there, never once
discovered, and eventually met a patient that could introduce her to someone
who sold heroin. She still felt that drugs could easily take her back to
Paradise, or very close. She easily learned to inject herself, after the
patient was paid with a shot to show her how, and never had any problems with
getting clean needles from chemists. The heroin was the closest she ever did
get back to Paradise and she was eventually found overdosed, the needle
sticking out of her left arm, by a hospital domestic. She was located by the
stink of her decay.

~~~

If you have been enjoying Fitzpatrick's stories here you may also enjoy his short story collections, and other books, available online as both Kindle books and paperbacks (go to http://amzn.to/1NfodtN). Other ebook and paperback options are available at http://bit.ly/1UsyvKD Fitzpatrick has also had a collection of short stories, Aberrant Selected, published by Waldorf Publishing, available on Amazon.